The numbers: American manufacturers grew in June at the fastest pace in four months.

The Institute for Supply Management said its manufacturing index rose to 60.2% last month from 58.7% in May. That matches the second highest level of the current economic expansion that began in mid-2009. In February the index hit a 14-year high.

Readings over 50% indicate more companies are expanding instead of shrinking.

The numbers: American manufacturers grew in June at the fastest pace in four months.

The Institute for Supply Management said its manufacturing index rose to 60.2% last month from 58.7% in May. That matches the second highest level of the current economic expansion that began in mid-2009. In February the index hit a 14-year high.

Readings over 50% indicate more companies are expanding instead of shrinking.

New orders and employment were also quite strong, though a touch less so than in May. The index for new orders slipped to 63.5% from 63.7% and the employment gauge fell 0.3 percentage points to 56%.

What’s not so good: So-called supplier deliveries rose to a 14-year high, meaning the economy is developing more bottlenecks that could stoke inflation.

Companies have sought to buy materials such as steel and aluminum before tariffs took effect to lock in prices or guaranteed delivery. Yet a mad scramble to do so has played havoc on prices and the timing of deliveries.

Big picture: The economy is in very good shape after nine years of mostly steady expansion. Growth in the second quarter is could reach as high as 5%.

Read: GDP might top 5% in the spring, set 15-year high

The threat of trade war, however, could undercut the economy in the months ahead if tensions worsen or remain unresolved.

Supply delays and difficulty finding enough trucks and trains to move goods could also result in unwanted inflation that puts more pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.

What they are saying?: “The Section 232 steel tariffs are now impacting domestic steel prices and capacity. Base steel prices have already increased 20% since March,” said an executive at a maker of fabricated-metal products.

"European benchmarks closed lower across the board on Monday, marking a downbeat start for stocks to kick off the second half of 2018 as U.S. President Donald Trump signaled his resolve to target exports from the European Union."

"Asian stocks fell sharply on Monday as traders kicked off a new month and quarter with losses as trade tensions once again got a reboot and economic data from China disappointed."

"California-based vegan meat company Beyond Meat has announced the opening of a new production facility in Columbia, Missouri. The new facility will more than triple Beyond Meat’s current manufacturing footprint in order to meet high demand for the company’s products.

“This expansion in our production capacity will help us to meet the considerable increase in market demand we have seen for our new and innovative product offerings,” Mark Nelson, chief operating officer and chief financial officer at Beyond Meat, said in a press release.“Our expanded 100,000-sq-ft manufacturing footprint will provide the scale we need to service our rapidly growing retail, foodservice, and international customer base.”

In addition to ramping up production of popular Beyond Meat products like the vegan Beyond Burger and the Beyond Sausage, the company expects that the new production facility will create more than 250 new jobs this year."

"Half of the global population relies on seafood daily as the primary source of animal protein. American soybean farmers are feeding fish around the world, particularly in Southeast Asia. High-quality soy protein is fed to farmed fish and shellfish to support their growth and healthy development.

"Soybean meal is replacing fish meal, fish meal is basically from trash fish, and as we fish the waters dry, if you will, we’re going to have to find new opportunities for that," he says. "I think most of the growth is going to continue to occur in Asia, where you’re going to see research dedicated to improving the efficiency of that production, so the growth opportunities are really quite impressive."

Leeds predicts the soymeal market for fish will grow 5%-10% globally over the next several years.

"Places like Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, we think there will be some investments in the Middle East. Egypt, for example, is investing a lot in aquaculture.

"Half of the global population relies on seafood daily as the primary source of animal protein. American soybean farmers are feeding fish around the world, particularly in Southeast Asia. High-quality soy protein is fed to farmed fish and shellfish to support their growth and healthy development.

"Soybean meal is replacing fish meal, fish meal is basically from trash fish, and as we fish the waters dry, if you will, we’re going to have to find new opportunities for that," he says. "I think most of the growth is going to continue to occur in Asia, where you’re going to see research dedicated to improving the efficiency of that production, so the growth opportunities are really quite impressive."

Leeds predicts the soymeal market for fish will grow 5%-10% globally over the next several years.

"Places like Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, we think there will be some investments in the Middle East. Egypt, for example, is investing a lot in aquaculture.

A good point raised at the conference I was at on soybeans: if the US continues with its tariff war with China, it will begin to turn to Brazil for production. Brazil has the advantage of still being able to increase production because it has land that it can still farm while the US is at full capacity.

Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair.

A good point raised at the conference I was at on soybeans: if the US continues with its tariff war with China, it will begin to turn to Brazil for production. Brazil has the advantage of still being able to increase production because it has land that it can still farm while the US is at full capacity.

I hope Brazil can ramp up soon, things are already looking grim for China.

"Chinese markets are showing signs of worrying about supplies even though China is building up soybean stocks and Brazilians will supply the country in the next several months.

"If the two countries cannot reach a deal before the U.S. new-crop harvest, the Chinese soybean meal price may increase dramatically," said Dong Ping Lu, purchasing manager for Yangxiang Stock Co. Ltd., a feed company in Guangxi province in southern China. "There is no other country in the world that can provide the demand of China; we need to buy U.S. soybeans anyway."

Soybean prices fell to the lowest point in almost a decade on Monday, as looming Chinese tariffs threatened to kill off demand from the U.S.’s largest customer.

Futures for July fell 1.2% to $8.48 1/2 a bushel at the Chicago Board of Trade, the lowest close since March 2009.

The market tumbled 15% in June as soybeans, which became a crucial cash crop for beleaguered American farmers in recent years, got caught up in a trade dispute between China and the U.S.

Trade Fight Threatens Farm Belt Businesses
Beijing said it plans to introduce tariffs on U.S. soybean imports starting Friday, part of a package of measures retaliating against the Trump administration’s own threatened duties against hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods. Soybean buyers in China—the world’s largest consumer of oilseed, which gobbles up around a third of all the U.S.-grown crop—have sharply slowed their purchases in anticipation of the duties.

“That is the market,” said Jeff Kaprelian, a broker at advisory firm The Hueber Report. “There is nothing more important than Chinese demand.”

The tariffs could come at a particularly inopportune time for U.S. farmers. The agricultural industry has clambered through a long-running slump sparked by global crop gluts and low commodity prices. But the soybean market proved more resilient, bolstered in large part by a roaring Chinese appetite for oilseed to crush into pig feed and juice for cooking oil.

That demand prompted U.S. farmers to grow more of the crop, this year planting more soybeans than corn for the first time in 35 years.

Now those farmers, who had mostly decided what to sow before trade tensions between China and the U.S. flared up, aren’t sure what they will do with all of it come harvest time. Bumper soybean production in Brazil has increasingly allowed the Chinese to bypass the U.S. altogether, though some of that lost business could be replaced by other countries.

“They’re definitely in the red,” said Joel Karlin, an economist at Western Milling. “The reason that U.S. farmers planted more soybeans than corn is that because the return from soybeans was more profitable…The farm community was not anticipating this.”

Researchers at the University of Illinois and Ohio State University estimate that Chinese tariffs of 25% on U.S. soybean imports would cut income for a midsize Illinois grain farm by an average of 87% over four years, prompting a loss of more than $500,000 in the farm’s net worth by 2021.

The financial hit could push farmers away from soybeans and back toward traditional crops of choice, Mr. Karlin and others say, whether that be corn in Illinois, sunflowers in the Dakotas or cotton in the Delta.

The uncertainty around the future of trade with China has also made soybeans a less attractive investment to financial speculators. Data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission shows that hedge funds last week bet heavily that soybean prices were headed lower, increasing their net bets that prices would fall by almost 250%. Investors not long ago saw soybeans as a bright spot.

“The combination of a good crop and big time trade issues makes it hard to get too excited about buying the soybean market,” said Tomm Pfitzenmaier of Summit Commodity Brokerage.

—Jesse Newman contributed to this article.

Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair.

At the same time that China is looking to reduce its energy-intensive production, US energy-intensive manufacturing is becoming more economically viable thanks to the recent revolution in shale gas production.

Energy is a significant portion of total production costs in energy-intensive industries, for example, up to 40% in steel making, and 14-40% in glass production, depending on plant location. Today, the price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) is 70% lower in the US than in China, and electricity for industrial consumers is almost 40% cheaper, making energy-intensive manufacturing in the US increasingly attractive.

Some companies are taking note. In 2017, one of Taiwan’s largest steel companies announced that it had abandoned a plan to invest in Vietnam, and instead planned to invest US$1.6 billion to build a steel factory in the US. The largest auto glass producer in China, Fuyao Glass, recently made a US$1-billion investment in Ohio. This trend is further illustrated by Chinese manufacturers’ recent investments in other energy-intensive industries, such as paper and aluminium, in the US.

American workers earn a lot of money compared to their counterparts in China, but the U.S. can still come out on top when costs are taken as a whole.

"In the U.S., land, electricity and cotton are all much cheaper," Zhu said. "My production cost per ton of textiles is 25 percent lower [there]."

In addition, he said, wages for him in China have been increasing 30 percent each year for much of the past decade. He has pledged $220 million to build and expand a facility in South Carolina and plans to eventually move the entire business to the U.S. where he plans to employ more than 500 people by the end of the year.

Add in a lower corporate tax of 15 percent and the U.S. becomes a no-brainer for many manufacturers Zhu said.

U.S. state politicians will pitch to a foreign company to bring in the jobs, but once they've invested, it's said the American officials leave them alone. Once a company is in the U.S., Chinese or not, it is treated like any other company.

"If we can succeed in the U.S. market, we can succeed anywhere in the world," President Yu Jun told CNBC, adding that having facilities in the U.S. makes a manufacturer more nimble to respond to a customer's needs.

"No matter if it's a good economy or a bad economy, the U.S. is still the number one market for any company in the world," Ling explained. "So certainly, naturally you want to be closer to where your customers are."

Nines to Felix: "I know a lot of really successful lawyers. My oldest son is a full partner in a prestigious law firm. I know the gig. None of them have the time nor inclination to post the never-ending drivel like you've done for decades here"

Everyone knows the joyous statistics, of the lowest unemployment rate in two decades, the lowest black and Hispanic unemployment rates in three decades (at least), a record number of Americans today who are working, and 5 million bonuses paid out to middle-income Americans this year. President Donald Trump boasts about the job market almost daily, and deservedly so. Several of the Democrats on the committee kept disparaging the Trump tax reform as the "tax scam" for the rich. That was a good sound bite a year ago, but do they still want to stick with that message today when about two-thirds of Americans rate the economy as "good" or "great"? This is called leading with your chin.

The good news goes beyond the headline numbers. Almost 800,000 construction, manufacturing and mining jobs have been created since Trump's election. These are the blue-collar and middle-class jobs that had been flat or disappearing for years. Last week, the National Association of Manufacturers found that 95 percent are optimistic about the future. More than 4 in 5 in the survey said they plan new investment because of the tax cuts. Wow!

The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data show 6 million unfilled jobs and a shortage of workers to fill them. This is the very definition of a tight labor market and will most likely lead to higher wages and bonuses to workers. It is already having this effect. In some parts of the country, employers are paying signing bonuses of up to $25,000 for welders, pipe fitters, engineers and truck drivers. "We've probably never had a situation like we have today, where the demand (for workers) is strong and capacity is constrained," says Bob Costello, chief economist of the American Trucking Associations.

The employment part of the economy continued to power forward in June, adding another 213,000 jobs

Despite increasing talk about the economy being near full employment, hiring continues to grow. Along with June's upside surprise, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised April's count up from 159,000 to 175,000 and May's from 223,000 to 244,000, a total of 37,000 more than initially stated.

All 11 primary S&P 500 sectors were higher in midday trading, with the health-care sector the biggest gainer by far, up 1.4% as Biogen rallied. The technology sector rose 1%.

For the week, the Dow is up 0.9%, the S&P is up 1.6%, and the Nasdaq has gained 2.2%.

What’s driving markets?The U.S. created 213,000 new jobs in June, above the 200,000 that had been expected, while the readings for May and April were also revised higher.

What are strategists saying?
“Perfect is the word for the jobs report. It was superb, literally nothing wrong with it,” said Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Investors. “Not only was the headline number better than expected, but there were positive revisions for the previous months. Meanwhile the rate of unemployment went up because of the growing participation rate, while at the same time wage inflation went down a tick. So we have a strengthening economy, with a strengthening labor market, with no runaway inflation. That’s all extremely positive for the equity market.”

The stock market shook off two weeks of losses and ended solidly higher even as Beijing and Washington imposed tariffs on each other's goods. Friday's gains on Wall Street followed two weeks of losses as trade tensions between the world's two largest economies mounted. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 99 points, or 0.4%, to 24,456, per the AP. The Nasdaq composite increased 101 points, or 1.3%, to 7,688, and the S&P 500 index rose 23 points, or 0.8%, to 2,759. The broad advance in stocks suggests that traders anticipate that the trade spat won't last long enough or escalate badly enough to cause serious damage to either country's economy. A solid pickup in hiring by US employers last month helped keep investors in a buying mood.

GRANITE CITY • About 20 times a day, a giant bucket carrying 200 tons of molten iron is shipped from one side of Granite City Works to the other and combined with scrap to produce new steel — something this plant stopped making for two years.

By October, when the second blast furnace restarts, the plant owned by Pittsburgh-based United States Steel will be fully operational and steel production will nearly double.

Shifts at the plant that has anchored this Metro East town for decades are already running 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Another 300 workers are expected to be hired to operate the second blast furnace, bringing employment at the plant back to about 1,500 people.

President Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel imports have buoyed the fortunes of domestic steel producers. In Granite City, which had been a big supplier for steel tubes used in the oil and gas industry, rising energy prices have also contributed to the decision in March to restart one of its blast furnaces.

The labor force rose by 601,000 people last month, driving the proportion of the civilian adult population that is either working or looking for work up by 0.2 percentage points, to 62.9 percent.

The unemployment rate rose because not all of the people looking for work found it immediately. That suggested they were ready and willing to fill the jobs that employers have kept creating at a healthy rate — an additional 213,000 positions in June alone.

U.S. manufacturing sector has been witnessing resurgence under the Trump administration since last year, shrugging off its long phase of weak productivity and sluggish growth.

Under Trump’s Presidency, manufacturing sector is flying high as manufacturers have increased capital spending and hiring driven by massive tax overhaul, deregulatory measures, strong domestic and global economy and robust business sentiment.

The demand for manufacturing products is on the rise. This trend is likely to be fueled further on the back of a massive infrastructure overhaul proposed by the government. At this stage, investment in manufacturing stocks with favorable Zacks Rank will be a lucrative move.

Robust Manufacturing Data for June

On Jun 2, the Institute for Supply Management reported that the U.S. manufacturing index rose to 60.2% in June from 58.7% in May. The June reading was highest in last four months as well as better than the consensus estimate of 58.4.

The Dow had its best day in a month on Monday, jumping by triple digits to close higher for a third straight session, as U.S. stocks posted a broad rally, with strong economic data appearing to offset worries about rising trade tensions.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.31% added 320.11 points, or 1.3%, to 24,776.59. The S&P 500 SPX, +0.88% rose 24.35 points, or 0.9%, to 2,784.17, while the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.88% climbed 67.81 points, or 0.9%, to 7,756.20. All three indexes finished higher for a third session in a row.

U.S. manufacturing surged in June, with motorized vehicle and parts leading the way.Manufacturers added 36,000 jobs last month, according to a breakdown by industry sector released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Motorized vehicle and parts accounted for an increase of 12,000 jobs.

U.S. Exporters Will Be a Surprise Loser From Tariff Fight
Economics and trade history show that as a country shuts out its partners’ products, it also deprives those partners of money to buy its exports

By Greg Ip
Updated July 9, 2018 5:45 a.m. ET

Who’s the biggest loser when tariffs are imposed on imports? The surprising answer: exporters.

Though completely counterintuitive, theory and evidence show that taxes on imports act just like a tax on exports.

Though it’s early, the Trump administration’s recent round of tariffs is already rippling out to exporters: Soybean farmers face plunging prices as China raises tariffs, Harley-Davidson will move production of motorcycles destined for the European Union out of the U.S., and BMW says foreign retaliation may hit exports from its South Carolina plant.

Economists credit Abba Lerner, then a graduate student at the London School of Economics, for proving theoretically in 1936 that an import tariff was equivalent to a tax on exports. The Lerner Symmetry Theorem is cxporters: Soybean farmers face plunging prices as China raises tariffs, Harley-Davidson will move production of motorcycles destined for the European Union out of the U.S., and BMW says foreign retaliation may hit exports from its South Carolina plant.

Economists credit Abba Lerner, then a graduate student at the London School of Economics, for proving theoretically in 1936 that an import tariff was equivalent to a tax on exports. The Lerner Symmetry Theorem is considered a key principle of trade economics, like 19th century economist David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage.

The practical link was obvious to protectionists and free traders alike as far back as the 1600s, says Douglas A. Irwin, an economist and trade historian at Dartmouth College. They understood that a country that shuts out imports deprives its trading partners of money to buy exports.

This, Mr. Irwin notes in his book “Clashing Over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy,” is why Americans were so divided over tariff policy in the 1800s. When Northern states succeeded in raising tariffs to protect their manufacturers, they angered Southern states who paid more for manufactured goods and suffered falling prices for their exports such as cotton and tobacco. Mr. Irwin’s data show that while exports and imports have varied between 3% and 25% of gross domestic product since 1790, the two tend to move together.

The link was especially strong under the gold standard because trade imbalances were financed by gold flows. If the U.S. ran a trade surplus, gold would flow in, depriving foreigners of the means to purchase U.S. goods. Now that exchange rates float, the effect is less direct, and a country can pay for imports by borrowing in the capital markets, as the U.S. has since the late 1970s.

Yet even now, exports and imports tend to rise and fall together, proof that the underlying relationship still holds. If the U.S., for any reason, cuts its imports from a trading partner, that country’s economy and currency both weaken, so it buys less from U.S. companies.

If a tariff generated significant new demand for the protected American sector, the resulting boost to prices and jobs would put upward pressure on inflation, interest rates and the dollar, further hurting exports.

In a recent National Bureau of Economic Research study, Alessandro Barattieri, Matteo Cacciatore and Fabio Ghironi examined the effect of changes in tariffs in 21 countries (though not the U.S.) and found they tended to reduce both imports and exports. On net, imports fell more, so the trade balance improved, but overall growth suffered because higher prices reduced consumers’ purchasing power, and the higher cost of imported capital goods undermined investment.

Over time, tariffs also reshape the economy. Newly protected industries draw workers and investment away from exporting industries whose inputs are now more expensive. That effect is compounded when exports are also targeted by foreign retaliatory tariffs. Heavily protected industries, like U.S. sugar farmers, don’t export much because prices abroad are much lower than at home. Protectionist countries like India and Brazil have lower imports and lower exports relative to GDP than open economies like South Korea and Chile, Mr. Irwin notes.

There are other signs of trouble for exporters. The dollar has risen sharply this year, mostly because of rising U.S. interest rates but also because U.S. tariffs have weighed on the currencies of Canada, Mexico, and China. That will tend to damp their purchases of U.S. products, even those unaffected by tariffs. The Texas Alliance of Energy Producers says higher costs and shortages of tubular steel due to the tariffs will hurt drilling and production of oil, the biggest U.S. export success story of recent years.

Like Harley-Davidson, many manufacturers who export from the U.S. may have to shift that activity abroad. “We export to more than 100 countries,” one manufacturer in the food, beverage and tobacco industry told the Institute for Supply Management in its latest monthly survey. “We are preparing to shift some customer responsibilities among manufacturing plants and business units due to trade issues (for example, we’ll shift production for China market from the U.S. to our Canadian plant to avoid higher tariffs).”

The end result of Mr. Trump’s efforts to make Americans spend more on American made products is that foreigners will spend less.

Not sure why Finisar didn't stay in California but it is still more good news for Texas.

SHERMAN (KRLD) - A high-tech company based in Silicon Valley has opened a new factory in North Texas.

Finisar Corp. will build vertical-cavity-surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) at a facility in Sherman, Texas. Those lasers are used in 3-D scanners with applications ranging from facial-recognition apps on cell phones to accident-prevention systems in automobiles.

"The number of applications that we're talking about are enormous," Finisar CEO Michael Hurlston told KRLD's David Johnson for the CEO Spotlight.

Finisar purchased an industrial building in Sherman formerly owned by MEMC Electronic Materials Inc. and converted it into a new factory. The company plans to employ about 500 people at the facility. It began hiring earlier this year and celebrated the official grand opening of the plant with a ribbon-cutting ceremony today.

"Since Finisar has made their announcement there's been increased activity in Grayson County," said County Judge Bill Magers. "I call it the Finisar Effect."

"Obviously, the international recognition that Grayson County and Sherman are receiving is priceless," he said. "We've got more national builders interested in Grayson County because of this publicity. It helped Sherman form a task group to build more homes for our citizens."

So lots of new homes as well. Isn't it great when you bring manufacturing to a community?

In related news Chinese car maker Geely just opened a Volvo factory in South Carolina.

"After breaking ground in September 2015, Volvo is ready to show the world its new factory outside of Charleston, South Carolina. The 2.3-million-square-foot factory on 1,600 acres — apparently known as "Project Thor" inside the company — will be the sole global producer of the new S60 sedan, expected to take over from the Chinese facility that currently builds it. Roughly half of the planned 60,000-unit S60 production, slated to start "late this year," will be exported. Volvo is showing off the factory on the same day the new S60 was revealed, along with details on pricing and subscriptions on the car."